"Breeding-back" aims to restore or immitate extinct animals by selective breeding. This blog provides general information, the facts behind myths and news from various projects.

Friday, 27 October 2017

New aurochs bull reconstruction

About three weeks ago, I presented a recent drawing I did of Europe's megaherbivore fauna of the Holocene. I promised that I am going to present the aurochs of the drawing on a separate, refined version which is what I am going to do today. I do that because I think it is one of the most accurate aurochs artworks I did recently. It is not a reconstruction that is based on an actual skeleton, but it is based on such reconstructions. Actually, the basis for the drawing were the bull reconstructions that I did in June 2017. I did them by tracking out mounted skeletons (I corrected anatomical flaws in the mounts at first) to assure maximum precision:

For my recent life illustration, I used the Vig bull and Kopenhagen bull (c and d) as a model, and decided to do it in a running pose. Here is the result (I decided to watermark it as I repeatedly made the experience that my drawings have been used without permission and crediting, which is not pleasant):

While body shape and proportions are dictated by the skeletons and wild cattle anatomy, there are a few aspects that allow subjective decisions. For example, I could have given my aurochs larger horns. But as the horns of Holocene aurochs were smaller on average than those of Pleistocene ones (see here or here), I gave it medium-sized horns. The snout is slightly convex and the nose curves downwards a bit, which is a trait found in many Lidia bulls but also displayed by a skull of a British aurochs. Colouration also leaves room for speculation or subjective decisions (see here), such as the colour of the eel stripe, forelocks and extent of the lightly coloured muzzle. I gave my aurochs a yellowish eel stripe, as it is the most frequent colour in wildtype coloured bulls and written sources are not clear (they just speak of a "lightly coloured" stripe). The lightly coloured mouth is never mentioned in contemporaneous texts, and cave paintings show them only for cows. In wildtype coloured cattle, this trait is very prominent in almost all cows and also widespread in bulls, but aging bulls often have it reduced. In gaurs and bantengs, this trait does occur, but not in all individuals. So perhaps it was not that prominent in grown aurochs bulls as well. As for the colour of the forelocks, I decided to draw them black, as this is better supported by the evidence (see the post linked above). All in all, I am very happy with this aurochs drawing as it really shows a 100% of what I imagine a typical Holocene European aurochs bull to have looked like. Perhaps not surprising as it was me who did this drawing, but this is not always the case. The result also bears great similarity to many Lidia bulls (Spanish fighting bulls), but more on that on an upcoming post. My recent aurochs reconstructions and illustrations all have been rather bull-based, which is why cows are about to follow.

This study might interest you Daniëlhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5572341/Distribution and Functionality of Copy Number Variation across European Cattle Populations.citation: Since north-western European cattle breeds harbor high frequency of aurochs’ specific alleles, probably as a result of secondary aurochs introgression (Park et al., 2015; Upadhyay et al., 2016), we investigated whether animals from these regions carry any unique CNVs. However, Vst based analysis did not identify any region specific CNV that might have introgressed from aurochs during secondary contact, i.e., CNV present only in animals of certain regions as a result of aurochs introgression. In the future, the availability of high-coverage sequence from archaic aurochs samples might aid researchers in identification of ancient CNVs in the genome of European cattle. Additionally, Vst based analysis also did not identify any breed-group differential CNVs, when contrasting HF (commercial breed) against IBR or BAI animals. This observation is consistent with a recent study on bovine population structure, where authors reported only few lineage-specific CNVs in breeds from the same continent, i.e., Holstein and Angus cattle breeds (Xu et al., 2016). However, quite a few breed-group differentiated CNVs between HF and BRI were identified, except a few, all of which turned out to be false positive CNVs. (My understanding of genetics is too poor)...One of the autors: Richard Crooymans (WUR) also studies hairsamples of individual dutch Taurus/Tauros-cattle.

Remie Bakker from manimalworks is currently working on a life-sized Aurochs reconstruction. Thougt you might be interested. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2001574973420068&set=pcb.2001575550086677&type=3

About this blog

This blog is on everything related to the so-called “breeding-back” of extinct animals: From the extinct animals themselves, over their often domestic descendants and dedomestication to news and facts about various breeding-back projects, reports and photos from my own breeding-back related trips. I try to have a balanced and fact-based approach to this subject and to dismantle many of the popular myths. Enjoy!

Labels

About me

My major interest always have been extinct animals, from dinosaurs to Pleistocene megafauna and more recent extinctions. Besides that I am interested in evolution, genetics and ecology.
I am also an amateur animal artist, making drawings and models mostly of extinct animals.